


Sign Your Name Here

by pickledbrows



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Deaf Character, M/M, Muteness, Physical Disability, Sign Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 21:05:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7190423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickledbrows/pseuds/pickledbrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erwin has always dreamed of green, gray, brown, and black. Of a man without a face. Of glittering steel. But Erwin cannot speak of these dreams. So, he paints them with no hope that anyone will ever understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sign Your Name Here

**Author's Note:**

> I had to re-post this after finding it on my old laptop. I'm sorry I even deleted it in the first place because I did so much research on it and it has a place in my heart.

The dreams started as soon as Erwin could remember ever having a dream, which probably meant he’d been having them before he could hold onto a memory. They were vivid with the odor of smoke and vibrations that could’ve been sound, but the only color he remembered was the deep green of a forest and the sharp gray of a bullet. He filled most of his works, a blend of photographs he'd taken and strokes of a brush or smudges of pastel, with these two colors and the vast amount of shades they could become with a bit of manipulation.

His condition started from birth, alongside the dreams probably. His parents had learned to understand his babbling when years at speech therapists proved futile, and when hearing aids proved useless when only one separated microphone could be hooked up at a time, the whole family took lessons in the language of their hands.

The schools in the small town he grew up in weren’t well equipped for children like him that were born with ten toes but not five senses, so they moved to a slightly bigger town with one school that had one teacher who could sign. 

Life wasn’t so bad. Erwin made it through high school, took up a degree in art history, and now here he was setting up his first private gallery, in a space rented with money he’d saved over the years via part-time jobs that he swore never to return to.

He did this all without uttering a single word and his handicap only added to the interest people had in him.

It was doubtful that such a thing could be called happiness.

 

\---

 

“Lots of brown, this one,” Petra said.

Erwin’s eyes flicked up at her, his hand moving to his ear to adjust the hearing aid he’d gotten for himself with a chunk of his savings. It was cheap and only picked up a little of what the built-in microphone could catch, but at least Petra didn't have to clip a cordless microphone onto her shirt anymore.

He watched as his sister pressed her fingers to her cheek and slid her hand down one more time, repeating the word with her mouth as well, and Erwin nodded and raised his hand to his forehead.

“The dream again,” Petra signed and Erwin's nods became enthusiastic.

“Wait. My shoes?” she asked with a smile and he responded with a glint of mischief in his eyes and a curl of his lip. 

His sister’s brown, knee-length boots were at the very bottom of the large piece, the very last one that a guest would encounter when walking through the gallery, and Erwin had used paints to render a gray and green figure standing amidst a gray mist and green backdrop. It was a recognizable form to those who saw his previous works. A faceless person shrouded in a fog. 

Petra found more amusement in the fact that the three-dimensional realness of her boots were being worn by the strokes of Erwin’s brush, and when she told Erwin how smoothly it managed to fit, he looked down at his feet and thanked her.

“Boy?” she asked. She’d never been sure and she definitely wanted to write something about this final piece in the newspaper. She’d taken up journalism and had already gotten a job. Her graduation was next year.

Erwin made a salute against his forehead and dropped his hand downwards.

“Man.”

 

\---

 

There were a lot more people than they’d anticipated. The first few that had come had brought notepads to write on, some had mistakenly pocketed recording devices, and they pulled Erwin away from the peace and silence of an unframed corner to surround him with fast moving lips and mumbles. Luckily, Petra stood at his side the entire time and helped to translate the words he could barely hear and what his hands could hardly explain.

When they were gone, to actually walk about the narrow stretch of a room and take in Erwin’s work from these last few months, he found relief in the calmer compliments from passers-by and gracious nods from those who turned to him during the rare moments that Petra was not around.

“Friends, here, coming,” she said after looking at something on her phone and left Erwin waiting at the two pieces that formed the halfway point. 

His eyes scanned over the one with the picture of a bicycle parking rail and the bark of a twig, his gaze following the trail of forest he’d drawn and created with his paints. Around him was the sound of buzzing he’d learned as a child to recognize as human speech. People, his guests, were chattering left and right and he reminded himself not to look up at them, lest they try to talk to him. The buzzing tickled Erwin, not physically but mentally as he fought his mind’s wish to try and understand something, anything.

“—scu—“

He turned to the piece sitting beside the one he’d just been looking at.

“—H—“

He turned his head to see if Petra was coming back and his eyes fell upon the person standing right behind him, lips moving and uttering a buzzing that was louder than the rest since he was so close.  
Erwin jumped in surprise, his eyes focused on the downturned mouth that wouldn’t stop moving.

Then it halted.

Opened.

Gray eyes closed and Erwin watched as broad shoulders slumped. A sigh. It usually meant disappointment.

He felt the solid thud of his heart against the inside of his chest, again and over and never ending. His face contorted into the emotions his hands could not portray as they moved about. He pointed to the painting on the wall, at his signature in the corner, pointed at himself, and signed his name in the air.

All he was met with from this stranger was a blank stare.

His hands stopped.

Fell.

The shorter man in front of him held up one of the gallery brochures and pointed at the picture on the back that Erwin had taken of himself. Petra had added it in, to make it easier for people to spot the artist, him, since he couldn’t actually speak up for himself.

A finger was pointed at the square photo, then pointed at Erwin’s face, accompanied by the scrunch of a question between thin, black eyebrows.

Erwin nodded and beamed and patted his chest.

The pointing man's name was Levi – easy and quick to spell out, Erwin had tried it out once Petra came back and introduced them – and he’d been at the gallery for half an hour now. He was acquainted with the people Petra had gone off to meet with and when they'd showed up with Petra in tow, they'd slapped his shoulder and then looked at Erwin with wide eyes and wider mouths. They buzzed so fast and grinned so wide that Erwin could only smile and pray for the tightness in his chest to go away soon.

Levi didn’t really smile. He’d simply nodded and said something when Petra introduced him and continued on like that while everyone else conversed. 

Hange and Isabel, the other two friends, had gone back to the beginning to actually scrutinize each work, and Petra had left temporarily to take care of someone who wanted a last minute interview. Erwin had asked for no more after the initial hour and was thankful his sister was protective of his need for privacy. Except now, her departure left him with Levi. He was quiet enough that Erwin didn’t find a need for his sister’s assistance, however it felt odd leading someone around who opened his mouth at every new piece, looked up at him in apology, then sealed his lips and expressed something bordering annoyance. 

When they came to the biggest and last painting, the only untitled one in the entire collection, Erwin took a moment to stare at Levi as Levi stared at the photo of Petra’s boots. Those gray eyes, watery steel, moved upwards while his lips parted and shut, and Erwin tapped his shoulder so he could signal for him to turn. Levi looked apologetic, however his mouth movements were still hard to read, and he had a strange accent that further blurred the words Erwin's hearing aid tried desperately to pick up on, so Erwin only offered a blank stare.

Levi sighed again and gestured to the painting.

Erwin glanced at it quickly.

Levi looked down at his hands with a lost expression on his face and then hesitantly stuck one thumb up.

Erwin smiled because his mother had told him years ago that ten was a good thing.

 

\---

 

On the second day, when Erwin made it to the venue, his assistant and friend, Nanaba, who'd rented the space out to him handed him a folded up brochure that was slightly worn out at the edges and heavily creased. He took it with a curious look then opened it up, eyes widening at seeing the note scratched in the gaps of printed text. He slowly worked through it, piecing together the meaning and hoping he didn’t misinterpret any of it. Nanaba couldn’t sign, unfortunately, so he pocketed the brochure for now to show Petra later. 

He thanked his friend, who made a gesture with her hand out and palm down held close in height to her face, before pointing in the direction of the pamphlet tucked in Erwin’s back pocket. Her lips formed a word he couldn’t recognize. A question maybe. All he could do was adjust his hearing aid again and hope the tightness in his chest would fade.

“Tomorrow, Levi come,” Petra told him that night. 

Tomorrow was the third and final day for Erwin’s gallery.

“Levi, writer,” Petra added.

Apparently he wrote freelance for a local art magazine.

Erwin rested his hand over his heartbeat.

That night, his dreams were filled with smoke and the bright green of fresh spring. Easter maybe. He woke before the sun, pulled out the sketchpad that had slid itself between his headboard and mattress, and used his dulled pencil to sketch a faceless man.

 

\---

 

Levi had a notepad in his hand when Erwin met with him at the front of the venue. He looked up with his tired grays and waved in greeting before flipping the spiral book open and showing Erwin a neatly written note.

“Interview?”

Erwin looked around for Petra, then he remembered she wouldn’t be there until thirty minutes before closing. He bit his lip and raised his hands up, but then paused and reached into his pocket for his wallet, hoping he still had that photo of him and his sister and hoping more so that Levi would understand.

Levi was reaching into his pocket too and took out a folded up sheet of paper before Erwin could find the picture. It was a list of questions, each of which was separated with plenty of blank space, and while Erwin slowly made his way through number one, Levi flipped to another sheet in his small notepad, scribbled something down, then held it up.

“Read? Write?”

Erwin nodded slowly, eyes narrowed in concentration. They opened up wide when Levi hesitantly placed an open hand to his chest and moved it in a small circle. He was biting his lip and not really looking at Erwin’s face. 

He was apologizing.

Erwin held out his hand for the pencil he was holding. He reminded himself to smile so Levi wouldn’t feel bad.

 

\---

 

Everyone wanted to know the name of the final, faceless piece, everyone being every local news and local magazine article online and in print that decided to write something about what he’d shown that weekend. Erwin didn’t know how to respond because he still wasn’t sure of a title, so he said nothing and everyone just kept asking. He told Petra to announce that he really didn’t know but she said it wouldn’t help. Erwin didn’t understand why it was so important.

The nights following the success of his first gallery were filled with smoke, endless landscape, the brown of a horse’s mane, and black. There was a swish of black this time, lots of brown, and always the green and the gray.

He saw skin for the first time and there were white birds with blue wings. That was new.

He went to a pet store to snap a picture of a dove, printed it big for his canvas, and then went to work with blue-gray paint. He gave the bird a black head and a green beak. He named this piece Freedom.

Levi wrote about Freedom.

The magazine he’d written for was abuzz with the article about the up-and-coming artist, Erwin Smith, and Levi had stopped by Erwin's apartment to do another interview. Petra wasn’t around but Levi’s questions were short and simple, using words Erwin recognized easily.

“New painting?”

Erwin showed him Freedom, which still sat at his workspace by his bedroom window. 

“Picture?”

Erwin pointed at the bird photo but Levi shook his head, took out a camera from the bag he’d brought along, and gave it a tap.

Erwin nodded his okay.

At the end of their meeting over tea and cakes that Erwin had popped from his oven early that morning, Levi put a hand to his chin and gestured his thanks. Erwin’s heart pounded and he asked Levi if he was learning to sign, but all he got was a tilt of a head. Erwin focused on the strands of Levi’s hair that swung away from his face with the movement.

Black.

Later, his dreams were of brown, gray, black, blue, white, and green.

“Many colors,” Petra said with wide eyes and a wide mouth when she saw Erwin's current work. She smiled.

Erwin had taken a photo of a piece of cake he’d baked. Chocolate, so it was dark brown. He painted over that picture with his odd mixture of shades and hues and called it Tree. Levi wrote about Tree and included a picture of it in his article. The art community buzzed. 

Erwin received an invitation from a museum.

He dreamed some more.

 

\---

 

Levi was flipping through one of Erwin’s old portfolios that was filled with messy sketches and unfinished pieces. He looked up at Erwin, his finger resting on the penciled man on the currently opened page.

“Who? Man,” Levi signed. His motions were becoming more fluid each time he dropped by.

Erwin nodded and reached over, flipping one page at a time and pointing at each of the similar figures that appeared. This one in a corner, this one only of legs, this one of a hand from the first time he saw skin.

“My dream,” he told Levi and Levi repeated the motion with confusion on his face, so Erwin picked up a pencil he’d left lying on the table, pulled the sketch close, and wrote “dream” on one corner.

“Dream, a lot? Man?” Levi asked. His hands moved from one word to the next as he tried to find a sensible order to them. Erwin smiled and nodded. Then he suddenly frowned and Levi dropped his hands before apologizing.

Erwin shook his head, touched a hand to his face, and then touched the blank face of the page he’d written on.

“No.”

Levi repeated, “No,” as a question.

“No,” Erwin sighed, “Face. I don’t know. Don’t see.”

A pause.

“Okay,” Levi reassured him but Erwin shook his head and bit his lip hard.

He woke up from an empty sleep that night.

 

\---

 

“Say Levi, how?” he asked Petra one day when she came to visit after the success of his opening at the museum.

Petra pointed to his ear, signaling him to switch his hearing aid on since he usually kept it off around her to save battery life, and then she leaned in close. He watched her mouth, saw her tongue touch her top teeth for a second before disappearing as her lips stretched outwards in a long, high buzz. Her top teeth then touched her bottom lip before parting with a noise that dropped low.

Erwin reached out to touch her cheek and she repeated the two syllables over and over for him. He felt the vibration of the “vi” when she stressed the sound and she moved his fingertips to her throat, smiling when he pressed against the noise she emitted.

He tried it that night, a hand to his bottom lip, his tongue against his teeth, his other hand resting against the side of his throat. He grunted as his mouth moved and he stared at his ceiling, concentrating on recalling what Petra’s mouth had looked like earlier. He thought of trying this with a mirror later.

His dream was filled with a crackling buzz that started high then dropped so low he couldn’t even feel the vibration of the noise. Something not sound, he recognized the movement of sound in his dreams though he didn't understand it, trembled within his dream and shook him awake, like an earthquake or a train coming down the platform, except his eyes snapped open and his heart was racing with fear.

He must’ve slept wrong. His right arm was hurting.

 

\---

 

Erwin wanted to call it Faceless, that final piece from his first collection that made it’s way into the museum and stayed there for a month. Petra said to leave it untitled and the museum hadn’t really cared, although the articles in the papers and online were endless with theories and questions concerning the mysterious figure. 

A lot of the pieces Erwin sent to the museum had the faceless man in it, ranging from some of his earlier sketches that were simple, blurred, and used only two colors, to the more recent and more detailed paintings with black hair, brown shoes, and the curves of feathers that made up what many presumed to be clothes. He included Tree and Freedom. Those were already popular thanks to Levi.

“This one is Levi,” Erwin joked to Levi while pointing at his most current piece that used a photo of Levi’s black notepad cover. The writer had dropped by the museum with him so he could add his own opinions about the exhibit in another freelance job.

Levi looked shocked and signed, “No,” so adamantly and repetitively that Erwin felt his heart sink into his stomach. He did his best to reassure Levi that he’d just been joking and apologized for upsetting him.

Levi shook his head, took out his phone, and after a few minutes of typing and scrolling and fumbling hand motions, he apologized to Erwin, then said, “I, no good, inside your painting.”

Erwin took a picture of Levi’s face a few days later after asking permission, promising it would be a private piece, and when his friend left he shrouded the printed photo in green and gray curves that looked like a set of outspread wings.

He woke up from that night’s dream with a sting in his ears and a cramp in his right shoulder.

 

\---

 

“How say Levi?” he asked Levi one day as they sipped tea. Erwin had never been in Levi’s apartment before, but the man had invited him over to try out the tea his cousin had brought as a souvenir from a trip overseas. 

Levi just looked at him with a puzzled expression and Erwin said, “Speak, please,” with a gentle tap of his fingers to his lips.

The other man’s mouth moved so fast and so minimal that Erwin was the one frowning and moving his chair around the table so he could sit closer. 

“Again.”

Levi looked off, uncomfortable, and repeated his name.

“I’m embarrassed,” he told Erwin after he’d been asked to repeat it a third time.

Erwin didn’t understand why and simply asked Levi to say it again but slower. When Levi did, his eyes looked somewhere past Erwin’s ear, and Erwin reached forward and pressed his fingertips to Levi’s lips.

Levi shot back in his seat, mouth open as he shouted in alarm.

“No. I feel, helps me,” Erwin explained, chest straining with his mind as he tried to reassure Levi with soft grunts and harsh movements with his hands and fingers. Levi hadn’t been studying how to sign for too long, so he was at a loss. They both were.

When Levi remained seated with his back pressed against his chair, Erwin dropped his eyes to his lap, brows crinkling as one hand moved in an endless circle between them, trying to find something, anything, that would offer reassurance.

His hand was taken mid-air and when he looked up, Levi was biting his lip but eventually pressing Erwin’s fingertips to his mouth.

Levi’s skin was warm.

Erwin leaned in close, eyes trained on the movement of that soft mouth, and he found he was mimicking the motions with his own teeth and lips and tongue. When his fingers trailed down to touch Levi’s throat and he looked up into familiar gray eyes, he inhaled so sharply that he coughed and his hand snapped back to quickly cover his mouth. 

Levi’s cheeks were red.

When he returned home that night, Erwin looked into his bathroom mirror and placed his hands to his mouth and throat, his eyes focused on the movement of his lips and teeth and tongue. He felt his mumbled groan and was shaken by the rumbled whine that followed.

He was sweating when he got up in the morning and he wondered if it was bad that he'd dreamed of Levi.

 

\---

 

Petra was worried.

The month at the museum had ended and Erwin had shut himself in his apartment for an entire week. He didn’t answer the few messages she’d sent him and none of their friends or relatives had gotten a second of his time. He was popular, his name worth something in the art community, and Petra felt herself being hounded by her boss and coworkers and other papers because she was Erwin Smith's sister and she could actually speak with him. They wanted to get in touch with him. A bigger museum wanted to collaborate with him for a special showcase in a few months. 

She ended up at his apartment, the first time she’d ever pushed her way into his life because this was the first time he had stopped communicating with her, and she rang the doorbell seven times before Erwin, sporting a prickly beard and moustache and heavy bags beneath his reddened eyes, cracked the door open.

“Let me in.”

Erwin did and he reeked so she forced him into the bathroom and checked to see if he had shaving cream before tidying up his living room and kitchen. He had an endless amount of portfolios and sheets of paper lying on every imaginable surface, and as Petra plucked them up and arranged them into a neat stack, her eyes roamed over the repeated, familiar subject that graced every sheet.

Brown, gray, black, blue, white, and green. Wings. Forests. A horse.

A man.

She jumped back in shock when the papers were suddenly swiped from her hand, Erwin casting a cold glare at her with his hair hanging wet and wild in his eyes and a towel wrapped loose about his waist.

“That man,” she began and Erwin flung the sketches away before signing at her so harshly, so angrily, to be quiet that she stood paralyzed and silent beside him.

His hair continued to drip, the water running down his skin, and she finally noticed the scratch marks around his right arm. She gasped, touched them gently, and he recoiled with an angry growl.

“I can see,” Erwin told her later when he was dried up, clothed, and seated at his cleared away kitchen table while they waited for the takeout she’d ordered. His binders and the loose papers were stacked neatly on the table, the top sheet turned over to show the blank backside.

“The man?”

Erwin’s chin dropped down toward his chest. Petra reached up to touch his cheek, smooth and suddenly wet, and Erwin trembled before lifting his hands. 

“I see his face.”

Then he took her hand and led her away from the kitchen.

In Erwin’s bedroom was his workspace beside the window, and sitting on his workspace desk was a drawing. Just ink, no photograph, with lines so clear Petra wasn’t sure it was even his because the style was so different from anything else he had ever done. Everything was so detailed like a photograph that she found it hard to believe he’d done it all with a handful of cheap, colored pens.

It was a man with black hair, wearing a green cape and brown boots, and sitting atop a black horse. He had a sword in his hand. His eyes were like steel.

 

\---

 

Erwin refused the museum’s invitation, telling Petra to tell everyone he had a creative block. All the articles said that he was simply having the jitters from his boost of popularity, and while some criticized him, most decided to just leave him alone until he bounced back. He wasn’t sure he ever would. He was so tired these days since he drank a lot of coffee and took pills to keep himself awake. He didn’t want to go to sleep.

Lately, there’d been a lot of teeth in his dreams as well as pain that his unconscious self could feel, and he woke up with his arm covered in scratches.

He ended up in the hospital due to an infection caused by too much coffee eroding his kidneys. The doctor prescribed him pills for his sickness as well as pills for sleep. Petra forced him to take everything, explaining that she’d end up sick too from all her worries, and he felt bad and did as he was told.

Every waking morning, he was covered in a thin layer of sweat and his heart was pounding so hard it took him up to six minutes to catch his breath.

He bandaged up his right arm. The doctor said the impulse to scratch was probably caused by anxiety.

Levi came by at Petra’s request. He’d been busy lately doing freelance work for another magazine about a local solo artist that the entertainment world took interest in due to her low-key origins, and he apologized profusely to Erwin for not coming by frequently like he used to.

“Sick?” he asked with worry in his eyes.

“Tired. Before, see doctor. Now, take medicine,” Erwin explained.

Levi had his notepad sitting in front of him and Erwin briefly remembered the handful of times he’d been handed a sheet of questions that Levi wanted answers to when writing articles about him. Levi hadn’t written anything about him in a long time because for a while now Erwin hadn’t presented any of his works to the public. He hadn’t made anything worth showing.

“Before, you tell museum no,” Levi signed, “Why?”

For the first time, Erwin wished Levi hadn’t taken up those ASL classes.

He bit his lip and touched a hand to his bandaged arm, scratching lightly at the thick surface. Levi eyed it.

“Hurt?” 

“No.”

“Then why?” Levi repeated and sat back when Erwin abruptly stood and motioned for him to follow.

He led Levi to his room, to his work space, and dug around in a drawer for the pen piece he’d tucked away after he’d shown it to Petra. Without comment or looking up, he slid the sheet onto his desk and motioned for Levi to look at it.

 

\---

 

Erwin woke up in tears that night and called his sister four times before she woke up. He cried hiccups and gasped grunts into the phone and she showed up before the sunlight to rock him gently on his couch.

When she left, it was well into morning.

He took a picture of his arm and doused it in red.

He messaged Nanaba, asking to rent her space again, and she agreed to the date he’d requested. 

Two months from now.

Levi showed up everyday for two weeks at Erwin’s request. He took an hour or three to write up articles for papers and magazines and his personal blog and asked Erwin if he wanted his upcoming exhibit to be mentioned anywhere.

“No.”

The other hours he spent at Erwin’s apartment were sitting on the couch, at the kitchen table, leaning against a window or a kitchen counter, sitting in the bathtub, lying across Erwin’s bed, allowing Erwin to take endless photos of him before going off to print them. Erwin never showed Levi those photos and Levi never asked. 

“Pen drawing, in exhibit?” Levi asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Good idea, I think,” Levi said and Erwin ignored him.

At the end of the first week, Levi asked why Erwin wanted to use so many photos of him. Erwin didn’t explain because he didn’t know how to, but he told Levi no one would know his identity once he was finished with his paints and pastels and pens. Levi couldn’t quite grasp the meaning behind his hand motions and they both gave up, neither of them trying to write down on Levi’s notepad like they used to. Instead, Levi simply told Erwin he wanted to see the pieces before they were put up in the gallery.

Erwin said okay and kicked Levi out of his apartment at the end of the two weeks.

That entire time, he hadn’t had a single dream.

A week later, he woke up with his arm bandage undone and blood on his bed sheet. His nails were caked with dark red, smelling strongly of copper, and he used sticky bandages instead of a gauze wrap for his scrapes after taking a shower. 

Levi messaged him every few days to ask how he was doing and Erwin replied with, “Busy. Okay.”

Petra showed up a few times with articles from recent magazines and online reports, explaining that a lot of people were waiting to see what he’d do next, that he’d stayed silent a bit too long after his first two successful exhibits, and he told her that they had to wait a little longer.

“Next exhibit, don’t tell,” he made her promise.

He didn’t want it announced until a week before. He wanted to be sure of everything he was doing, he wanted to be able to commit to this before people buzzed in anticipation. Let them wait. This wasn’t for them, after all.

“At least give them a peek at something,” she suggested but Erwin adamantly refused.

Two weeks before the date of his show, he woke up and sketched Levi in an oversized black coat with a bandage wrapped tight around one ankle. He swept an ink-stained hand through his oily, limp hair and gritted his teeth in answer to the burn in his eyes.

One week later, Petra announced the date of his exhibit. The buzzing was endless and Erwin hid himself away in his apartment. All his pieces were finished and ready to be moved over to the venue, carefully wrapped up and sitting in a pile on his living room floor or leaning against his walls and couch. He didn’t bother checking over any of them once he deemed them complete and even though they were bound up, each image was imprinted deep into his memory.

Then he remembered Levi’s request and tore away the paper and ties before calling him over. 

Levi looked shocked at the array of different sized canvases littering Erwin’s kitchen and living room area. He put his bag down along with his notepad and pen and carefully stepped around each piece, eyes scanning over the photos and paints and inks and pastels Erwin had spent most of his time with over the past almost two months. When Levi looked up at him, mouth parted and eyes wide, Erwin returned his gaze. Steadily, he raised his hands.

“All you.”

Slowly, Levi moved around the largest piece in the room, the different parts making it up set in a haphazard pile since Erwin’s apartment wasn’t large enough to lay the entire thing out. It was the biggest and the most simple, a completely black form of a person that used a blown-up image of Levi’s left ankle and foot. 

“No face.”

Upon further inspection of the surrounding works, Levi noticed that Erwin really hadn’t used any photos of his face. Just the back of his head, a hand, a shoulder, his knee, the bag he always carried, a close-up of his eye.

He turned to face Erwin once more, hands raised and creating empty circles as he tried to find something, anything, worth saying. He opened his mouth, closed it, his head turned left and right while his eyes moved around and up and down, searching the room and maybe his mind as well, wracking his thoughts as his hand motions grew desperate to communicate.

Erwin beat him to it.

“My dream,” he said twice, to make sure Levi understood, and slowly he walked around until he stood right in front of the other man.

“Me, in dream,” Levi asked, his mouth moving out of sync with the motion of his hands. But Erwin understood well enough.

However, would Levi understand this?

“Always. You,” he struggled, hands motioning to Levi over and over. He bit his lip, Levi bit his own, and when Erwin simply raised his right hand to form letters, he watched those eyes watching the motions of his fingers. Slow, because Levi was not yet quick at recognizing the alphabet.

“L,” from his lips and his own hand worked to copy the sign. It always helped for him to mimic Erwin.

“E.”

Gray eyes flickered up to meet Erwin’s blue then dropped back down as they simultaneously formed “V.”

Erwin stepped closer, his right hand reaching out. His chest tightened as he folded all his fingers into a fist except for his smallest.

“I.”

He linked their pinkies together and drew Levi’s hand into his. It was shaking; a tremor out of rhythm with Erwin’s heart, and Erwin felt a tremble run through him. For a moment, he wondered if perhaps there was a mild earthquake or the train from miles down the road could be felt from here. It couldn’t have been Levi’s voice, because his lips were sealed tight and pale and dry.

He realized it was what little of his own he could muster as he pressed Levi’s fingers to his mouth, his tongue pushing to the back of his teeth before falling away as his lips stretched out in a whining grumble. He felt his top teeth touch his bottom lip before his mouth popped open, his throat emitting a husky drawl. His brows furrowed, not sure he’d gotten it right, but then Levi’s other hand was pressing to the side of his throat, soft and gentle and warm.

“Again,” Levi mouthed with reddened cheeks. 

Erwin did as was asked and when Levi requested for a third time, he slid his larger hand over the one against his neck, shut his eyes, and spoke.


End file.
